Been a fan of this RISD graduate and now NYC resident for some time. He was in SF last week and we got to ask him a couple questions.

An intelligent balance between chaos and calm. From looking at Ryan's work you can see his illustration background from R.I.S.D. and from there has gone onto painting and recently into sculpture. His work has graced the pages of Hot and Cold and shown through San Francisco but calls NYC and Envoy Gallery home. We touch on his work in this interview but saved the meat and potatoes for our podcast with Andrew Schoultz (up in a couple days).

I work on multiple pieces at once in a variety of media. It is all one
process to me. Each type of work speaks autonomously as a part of what I'm
thinking about as a whole. I always have oil paintings going. While those
dry I'll work on something on paper or a panel. I've been using tape lately
in the beginning of parts of my paintings and as it is painted on in the masking process it becomes a valuable element that I use along with cut
papers in other work. When that material runs out, the paintings are usually
dry enough, so I'll go back to those. It keeps me interested in making work
and allows me to make different types of things depending on mood or
availability. Making things simultaneously without being totally focused on
a group of "paintings" or "drawings" helps me understand what will make a
painting or a drawing work for me in an interesting way.

What materials do you normally work in?

I make oil and alkyd paintings on canvas and mixed media works on panel;
drawings and prints on paper.
I've been working on three dimensional work as well lately, which I'm really
excited about.

If you had to explain your work to a stranger, how would you do it?

Peppered with "ums", "likes" and "but not reallys" something to the effect of my work being abstract but rooted in landscape. It looks like things, place sand events but there is nothing naturalistic or representational. I use geometry but it exists in space rather than as pure abstraction. I've been using cold colors lately. Just look at my website or come by studio, I'm embarrassed.

Don't be embarrassed... But why do you think you gravitate towards them?

I think it makes sense for what I'm trying to speak to and influenced by. In part I'm drawing inspiration from trends in science and technology so cooler colors feel appropriate. Same reason for the use of geometry. I'm hoping those elements help guide viewers into the right direction on first glance.

When did you leave Providence, Rhode Island?

Coming up on nine years of living in the same apartment here in New York. I came out
to be amongst friends and to see if I really wanted to be an artist.

How has it panned out? Have you benefited from working there in NYC?

I guess it's working out. I have a lot of time to make things and right now it really feels right. I'm lucky in that I'm surrounded by a lot of great artists who are also great friends as well as great people who aren't in the art world. I like that balance. I'm grateful to be a part of the community that I am. New York has always felt like home and gives me a good, "well you're here, you should probably not just sit around listening to records or watching Law & Order." It's a good motivator. Navigating motivation and having a life can get tricky but it's really important for me, as well as for what happens in studio. Sometimes watching television and going into mind neutral is just what I need. I'm off in a good tailspin frequently.

What do love most about living in the Big Apple?

Leaving and going surfing in Montauk. Throw in a horse ride.

Surfing? Horse back rides?... What sorts of city living things are you into these days?

When I'm in the city I spend time in studio, go to others, see friends, try to skate, mess around with music, look at art, go see music, go to parks, eat out every single day. I guess eating out everyday is kind of New York. I'm cheese and crackers when I'm on my own. I only like cooking with my girlfriend. She usually takes over. She's an outstanding chef.

If I came out for a visit what would we do/ where would you take me?

I'd take you to my apartment to see other peoples artwork. I'd take you to
my studio to see mine, and if Joseph Hart was around, hopefully he'd show
you his. If you'd never been to New York before I would like go to the top
of the Empire State Building, on a Staten Island Ferry ride passed the
Statue of Liberty to Snug Harbor, and Fort Wadsworth, then onto the Tram to
Roosevelt Island to see some ruins, amputees and architecture from
Rotterdam. Then to Central Park, the Cloisters and Prospect Park. I hope you
remembered the Frisbee. If you like skateboarding we'd go. If you like
making music, we'd jam. Then we'd go to the Museum of Natural History and
the Met and all the other midtown Museums before the New York Public Library. Make our way to Chelsea, Downtown to Envoy. Per Se for dinner before the Morrissey show at Hammerstein.
We'd probably just be at Yummy Taco after studio so you could taste New York
Asian burritos. I'm kind of tired.

What's the deal with Morrissey? He's such a "thing".

I guess a lot of people just really want to get what they want this time and hate it when their friends become successful.

Trying not to force it. Time and patience. Doing something else and not beating myself up. It's part of the job. I work consistently when things are going well so I haven't had to worry about a deadline for a little bit. It's pick and choose. If one is approaching and I'm in good shape, I'll try something that I've been waiting to try. If it fails it's no whoop. Things happen best for me when I'm not thinking "oh, this would be good for that."

Favorite trip taken?

They're all the best on ever when I get home. China was notable.

Music?

I have an ipod at studio with a broken screen so I have to listen to the
artists in alphabetical order. Today it played Belle & Sebastian into
Burzum. That's a pretty accurate description.

What were you like in high school?

I skateboarded in the 90's. I also went to Limelight and all the others more
than once.

Upcoming projects and/ or upcoming shows, etc...?

I'm doing another solo show with Envoy sometime next year. I'm in John
Freeborn's Big Kids/Little kids which is traveling. I just found out about a
group show at American University coming up. A few other solos are in the
works but I don't want to talk about them yet. "N'allez pas trop vite."

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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